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New York mayor finds Colorado good place to spend political funds

In the “giving credit where credit is due” department, it’s only right we give our friends on the political left recognition for some important things.

For instance, and this is important to our situation in Colorado, they deserve a great deal of credit for obscuring the reality that the present American left is predominantly led by megalomaniacal plutocrats.

As an example, let’s get down to brass tacks — or in this case, the solid gold cuff- links of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

We are fortunate that in general, Coloradans don’t have a lot of personal interaction with His Honor, the mayor. But this year he decided to intrude financially, quite forcefully, into Colorado politics. And why not? He can afford it.

The mayor is the seventh richest man in America, according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated fortune of about $27 billion. Forbes estimated his wealth grew by $5 billion just in the last year.

Bloomberg likes to get his way. When he decided that he wanted federal gun-control but Congress, in one of its rare moments of listening to constituents, wouldn’t do what he wanted, he did what most self-styled potentates do: He started forcing the issue.

In Colorado, through his political pressure group, America Votes, he began to spend money to influence state issues, and our state probably seemed to offer painless pickings for him. After all, this sort of thing had been done pretty easily before, when four Colorado Democratic millionaires (Pat Stryker, Jared Polis, Tim Gill and Rutt Bridges) put their pocketbooks together in the early 2000s to pour money into selected local races and change the political makeup of the Legislature.

If four folks with a few measly millions could do that with what Bloomberg probably considers walking-around money, imagine what he could do if he put his checkbook to it.

Much of the recent gun-control legislation in Colorado has received support from Bloomberg and his political groups. It’s difficult to say how much money the mayor has personally put into the effort through left-wing groups he supports. Those groups, in turn, support America Votes, which is listed as a 501(c)(4) group by the IRS and therefore doesn’t have to disclose its donors.

One wonders how long it took America Votes to get its IRS designation, compared to conservative groups, since it has national partners that include the AFL–CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers, the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and, of course, the Progressive Majority.

After the flood of gun-control legislation through the Colorado Legislature this session, many citizens decided to recall some of the legislators involved. The showpiece for this has been the recall of Senate President John Morse, from the Colorado Springs area, who appears to be a major recipient of the mayor’s political action committee’s efforts to keep him in office.

Supporters turned in double the amount of signatures required to force a recall election on Morse, even though he is term limited in 2014.

The group set up by these interests to assist Morse in retaining his seat is amusingly named, “A Whole Lot of People for John Morse.” The group’s filing agent seems to be very much in touch with the community in Colorado Springs, as he is the chairman of the Denver Democratic Party and reportedly has referred to Colorado Springs as “a right-wing, religious whack-job stronghold.” This leads me to intuit the group may like John Morse, but its members aren’t too crazy about the voters in his district.

Usually, I’m not a fan of recalls, since they turn out to be expensive and voters often get a chance at the offending politician in the next election anyway. However, the effort against Morse has become something of a showpiece, with both sides of the gun-control debate trying to assert power through an essentially inconsequential politician.

The Democratic candidate hoping to replace Morse is Michael Merrifield, the former state coordinator of Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

I don’t know if this means we’re important in Colorado or just a good buy.